La Roux has given the plainest account yet of where she went. In a TikTok posted this week, Elly Jackson wrote that singing Bulletproof cost her her voice, that a breakdown followed, and that she then vanished for a decade. The clip shows her sipping a drink while a remix of that 2009 single plays, and the caption reads simply that she is back now.
The song she names is the one that made her. Bulletproof went to number one in the UK and turned a synth-pop duo into a chart act, which is part of what makes the post land: she is answering anybody who thinks they can hurt her by pointing at the record that did.
The return is already underway. Old Flames, her fourth studio album, arrives on 6 November through Vertigo Records, and three songs from it are out. Lose Myself deals with her auADHD diagnosis and with addiction; Babyline and Cabin Fever came before it.
The album is the first since 2020's Supervision, and NME reports it was written around the collapse of a 17-year relationship. Jackson has said the record takes on forbidden love, the loneliness that comes with addiction, and the difficulty of squaring sexuality and identity with a public career. The lyrics reach for David Lynch and Donnie Darko as reference points.
She has described the writing as an audit rather than a comeback. Jackson said the album is her processing why she has behaved as she has and saying goodbye to it, a farewell to a way of behaving in love, in life and in music. That is a colder framing than most return records get.
The ten-year gap Jackson describes does not map exactly onto her discography, since Supervision came out in 2020, six years ago. What the TikTok appears to be counting is the stretch between the 2009 debut's fallout and now: the second album, Trouble in Paradise, arrived in 2014 after the departure of her writing partner Ben Langmaid, and there has been very little since.
Anyone following the autumn schedule will find Old Flames on the release calendar. Our earlier pop coverage of the record includes the single Lose Myself, and other artists have gone public about stepping back for the same reasons, among them the KATSEYE singer Sophia Laforteza.
The facts
- La Roux says a breakdown followed Bulletproof and she then vanished for a decade.
- Elly Jackson posted the account to TikTok over a remix of Bulletproof.
- Her fourth studio album Old Flames is out on 6 November 2026.
- The album comes through Vertigo Records.
- Singles Lose Myself, Babyline and Cabin Fever are already out.
- Lose Myself deals with her auADHD diagnosis and addiction.
- Old Flames is the first album since 2020's Supervision.
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